


Ghosts That We Knew

by hiddenhibernian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, F/M, Ghosts, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts Library, Post-War, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25577350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiddenhibernian/pseuds/hiddenhibernian
Summary: Malfoy keeps following Hermione around Hogwarts. She has no idea why.She traced the scar on her left arm, wondering about Horcruxes and curses, and what marks they left behind on one's soul.“Is that from – was that Aunt Bellatrix?” a voice said in her ear, and Hermione shrieked.“Fuckinghell, Malfoy!”He looked sullen. “This is the dungeons, you know.”“Yes,” she agreed, trying to remember how to breathe. “If only you spent all your time here –”
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 24
Kudos: 137
Collections: 2020 Sounds Like Dramione





	Ghosts That We Knew

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [2020SoundsLikeDramione](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2020SoundsLikeDramione) collection. 



> Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me but are the property of J.K.R. and Warner Bros. No copyright infringement is intended. Thank you to my alpha and/or beta for their time and help. 
> 
> The prompt for my story was:  
> "There is a future in the air between us. I look at you and I believe it" from “Air Between Us” by Mama Kin Spender

“Bloody _hell_ , Malfoy – is it too much to ask that you stay out of the girls' bathroom?” Hermione hung on to the cracked sink as if her life depended on it, willing her hammering heart to settle down.

No one needed a faceful of Malfoy at six o'clock in the morning.

“Couldn't sleep, Granger?” he leered.

“ _Get out_!” She slammed the door to the stall. 

Mercifully, he was gone when she came out again. The mirror above the sink was as cracked as it ever had been, spots forming a virulent pattern across her reflection. 

She shuffled to the left to get a clear view. Her face was wrong; had been wrong ever since she had started looking herself in the mirror again.

It had not been a frequent occurrence during the last year, not before Hogwarts had reopened.

After the battle, she had been too busy realising it was finally over. Going to Australia, helping to rebuild Hogwarts, restoring her parents' memories, breaking up and getting back together with Ron and spending time with her friends had accounted for every waking minute until school started.

When it did, she suddenly had too much time to look into the mirror and see a stranger looking back. 

Too much time, more than she could fill up with homework and classes and her friends.

In a way, she was grateful most of her friends had not returned to Hogwarts this year (regardless of their foolishness in starting adult life without formal qualifications). It was better to share a different dorm with Ginny and the other girls than to see Lavender's empty bed every morning.

Away from Ron and Harry, it was a different school – she sat at a different place at the table in the Great Hall and found new spots on the grounds. No one had yet been able to show any shortcuts inside the castle that she didn't already know, but that's where sneaking around with the Marauder's Map got you.

Luna could be relied upon to hold a conversation mostly with herself, which was fortunate as Hermione didn't seem to find much to say these days, and Ginny flickered and waned. Some days, she was sparkling with life, and others she folded back into herself, in a way Hermione knew only too well.

Most of the other students gave them a wide berth. The invisible wall that had sprung up between those who had taken an active part in the war and those who had remained on the sidelines was probably not a good thing, but Hermione didn't even know where to begin tearing it down.

The others worried about homework, about exams, and she didn't know of a way to explain to them that it did not matter to her. She could not think of a way to do it that acknowledged they were in the right and she was the one who wasn't normal.

Not anymore.

And then there was Draco Malfoy, always popping up where he wasn't wanted.

She sighed and looked at the mirror again. It was still a stranger looking back, wary and unwilling to give anything away.

* * *

Even the walls had scars.

Every time she went down the dungeon stairs to Potions, Hermione let her hand trail the deep gouges in the roughly hewn stone. It was impossible to tell what had caused them – a stray curse, perhaps. Or someone using Fiendfyre, although she couldn't imagine anyone other than Crabbe being crazy enough to do it.

They were there, nevertheless, and there they would remain.

The repair crews had been busy putting a roof over their heads and repairing the classroom – their next priority was the greenhouses and ancillary buildings like Hagrid's hut. No one would have time to fix a perfectly serviceable wall for a very long time.

Scars...

She traced the scar on her left arm, wondering about Horcruxes and curses, and what marks they left behind on one's soul.

“Is that from – was that Aunt Bellatrix?” a voice said in her ear, and Hermione shrieked.

“Fucking _hell_ , Malfoy!”

He looked sullen. “This is the dungeons, you know.”

“Yes,” she agreed, trying to remember how to breathe. “If only you spent _all_ your time here –”

“I have just as much right as you to go anywhere I want in the castle!” he snapped.

“ – you wouldn't scare the life out of me on a regular basis, is what I was about to say.” Her eyes narrowed. “Come to think of it, I seem to bump into you all the time. Is there something you want to tell me?”

He looked uncertain and much younger than usual, and she realised how it might have sounded to him.

“Just an observation, I didn't mean anything by it. Yes, my scar is your aunt's handiwork.”

“Why didn't you?” he asked in a rush, as if he had to get it out before thinking better of it. “You – that was my fault, as much as hers. You have every right to demand an apology.”

“Would that make my scar disappear?” Hermione asked, after firmly squashing down any lingering pettiness. They had gone far beyond that.

“You made some bad choices. You're not the only one to have picked the wrong option when faced with an impossible situation,” she said gently.

He said nothing at all to that, looking stunned for the first time she could remember.

“Would you choose the same, if you were given the chance again?” she asked.

“No!”

“If it matters to you, I forgive you. I won't go as easy on those that were of age at the time, so don't bother asking on any else's behalf,” she warned him.

She could forgive a frightened boy. Those who had placed him in a situation where all choices were bad ones were a different matter altogether.

Maybe it was just as well Narcissa Malfoy had been barred from visiting the castle. Hermione may have been tempted to share what she thought of those who didn't consider the consequences of their choices as long as they were happening to other people.

* * *

The next time she turned around to see that he was behind her, they were in the library.

“Malfoy.”

“Granger.”

“To what do I owe this honour?”

“Your scintillating conversation, of course,” he replied. 

She actually laughed out loud. Madam Pince harrumphed loudly, and Hermione concentrated on her Herbology book for several minutes before she dared to look up again.

“Yes, I'm still here.” The wry smile sat easily on his face as if he often had smiled like that to his friends.

“Maybe if you try to be less witty, I won't actually get thrown out of the library,” she muttered, careful to keep her voice down.

“Hold on, Granger – did you call me witty?” The old smirk was back.

She decided not to say anything about it; at the rate, she was going, it would probably come out as a declaration of love or something, and she really did have to finish her Herbology essay.

“I don't suppose you know the best way to fertilise belladonnas with dragon dung, do you?” she asked instead. If he was determined to hang around, he may as well make himself useful.

* * *

It was easy to talk to Malfoy, in a way that made no sense at all.

The history between them and all that had happened sat there, unacknowledged, and for the moment it stayed that way. The castle and everything in it had changed, themselves not the least, so there was something comforting in trading insults with Malfoy whenever he appeared.

They got wittier and less barbed as time passed; Hermione had never truly got to experience the joy of bandying words before with someone who loved language as much as she did. Malfoy didn't just understand everything she said, he taught her new things too.

“'Snecker'? What does that even mean?”

“You know the sound a broomstick makes when it's on its last legs? Like a sad sort of spluttering,” he explained, his voice echoing in the near-empty Potions classroom she had been allowed to practise in. 

Being an eighth-year student came with some advantages.

“Thankfully, I don't.” She couldn't imagine any situation where that would be a good sign. “So you think my Calming Draught sneckering is a bad sign, then?”

“I would advise caution –” 

They both ducked as the cauldron exploded; of course, Malfoy did not suffer any of the consequences. 

Hermione surlily Vanished pink slime from her robes, the desk and what felt like most of the classroom. It was only at the end she realised what she had forgotten about: 

“My hair!”

“It's not so bad.” He had drifted back, now that there was entertainment to be had. “Pink suits you.”

Holding her wand to her head, her common sense returned in the nick of time. She let her hand sink and turned her back to Malfoy for inspection: “Can it be salvaged, do you think?”

“You're the one who takes on hopeless causes, you tell me.” His voice was so close it made the hairs on her neck stand up.

A glimmer of what this moment could have been if everything had been different – if they hadn't been who they were – flit across her mind like a falling star.

“That bad?” She made her voice light, but something had shifted between them.

He disappeared soon after that.

* * *

Hermione was floating in a bathtub full of purple water in the Prefects' bathroom, trying to figure out where it had all gone wrong for Draco.

Not the Battle of Hogwarts, not when they had been captured at Malfoy Manor – much earlier than that. At some point, he could have chosen differently – or could he? Had he ever been free to choose?

Had she ever been free to choose?

Yes, she decided, turning over for three breaststrokes before she hit the edge. She could have gone to a Muggle school or followed her parents to Australia. It had been her choice to follow Harry until the end.

Hers, and Ron's.

Suddenly he didn't feel so distant, not like he normally did even when they met up. She should send him a Patronus later, as soon as she got up and back to her wand. There would always be that bond between them, of having stuck together when it mattered, no matter how frayed it may get by distance and petty irritations.

Ron had got to choose as well, and had chosen right in the end.

Draco never got to choose at all.

* * *

“Aren't you going to leave, too?” Draco appeared at her left elbow as naturally as the rain falling over the grounds outside. She didn't even jump anymore.

The halls were full of students drifting around, saying goodbye to their friends and tracking down belongings before boarding the Hogwarts Express in a few hours. There was a buzz in the air, high spirits and holiday cheer approaching bursting point.

Hermione may as well have been from Mars, for all the enthusiasm she was able to summon.

“I'm staying at Hogwarts this year,” she said in a flat voice.

She tried very hard not to notice how the corners of Draco's mouth rose slightly, or that he sidled slightly closer to her. 

There was only one way it could end, and that was in tears.

Still, she stayed on the windowsill next to him until the whistle of the Hogwarts Express officially declared that the Christmas holidays had commenced, until the rain had turned into sleet and the light from Hagrid's hut was barely visible in the dark.

* * *

It had been snowing in Godric's Hollow. The last snowflakes melted into the fabric of her navy woollen coat as she righted herself after Apparating.

Curious, Hermione thought, how they stayed intact through the process even though her intestines felt like they had been through a tumble dryer.

“Where have you _been_?” Draco's face appeared an inch from hers, and she stepped backwards involuntarily.

“To St Jerome's, if you must know.” She glared at him. “Is there a specific reason that you're shrieking at me, or are you trying out a new greeting ceremony for visitors? I don't think they'll come back, if that's the effect you're looking for.”

He wouldn't stay still when she was talking to him. It was disconcerting to watch him bob up and down, so she addressed the last part of her diatribe to the mantlepiece.

“I thought – I was sure – did you not hear what happened?” His hand hovered above her arm, not touching it. Never touching it.

“What? What happened?” Some of his agitation had worn off on her now.

“There was an attack in Hogsmeade – seven students were injured! I thought – when I couldn't find you, and no one knew where you had gone –”

The world narrowed: only Draco's pale face and the ebb and flow of her breaths.

“Who was attacked? By whom?” Hermione asked, pulling her wand out, not noticing her hands moving before she felt the smooth wood in her hand. “When did this happen?”

“The Headmistress and some teachers Apparated there and brought the students back. The Aurors have taken over, according to Nearly Headless Nick. It's been dealt with, they think it was some disgruntled Death Eater who hadn't been captured –“

They raised their eyebrows at exactly the same time at that. It was hardly the only loose thread the Ministry had missed.

“What about the injured?” Hermione asked, still poised to Apparate at a moment's notice.

“They're in the Hospital Wing, superficial injuries only.”

She finally let the tension ebb, feeling her shoulders drop at least an inch. Not every mess was hers to straighten out, she told herself. Better to learn that lesson sooner rather than later.

One day, even Harry may get the message.

“Where did you _go_?” Draco asked again, less urgently but still insistent.

Hermione sighed. “You know you can't expect me to tell you every time I leave Hogwarts.”

“Every time you go somewhere I can't go.” His smile was wistful and it broke her heart, the way angry words never could.

“Every time I go somewhere you can't,” she repeated. “I went to Professor Snape's grave. I had to – I just wanted to pay my respects, I guess.”

His mouth twisted uncomfortably. “I – if there was anyone I wish I could have spoken to just one more time, it would be Severus. He –”

Hermione looked at him, willing her eyes to tell him she understood - more than she could put into words – the knot of guilt and belated understanding and gratitude that tied Draco to Severus Snape. How could she not, when the same tangled truths and carefully twisted lies had saved her and her friends?

That was why she had gone – it had been time to face his grave.

There had been no epiphanies, no sense of pieces falling into place. All she had found was the same old sorrow for things that had been lost and could never be found again. She felt it every time she looked into Draco's eyes, more transparent than grey those days.

“Listen, I have been thinking,” he said, shaking off the sadness. “I know I'm not supposed to know, but well –” He shrugged. Once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin. “I understand Potter left something in the Forbidden Forest.”

“Is this common knowledge?” Hermione asked sharply.

It had never sat well with her to leave it somewhere in the forest, but Harry had been adamant and there had been so many other things to worry about that she never quite got around to the Stone.

“Don't worry. Very few people would be able to put all the pieces together, and most of them are dead,” Draco said.

She coughed meaningfully.

“Dead and gone,” he specified. “If you're going to be pernickety about it.”

“You've known me since I was eleven. What do you expect?” she asked drily, desperately trying to turn the conversation back to familiar territory, with quips and barbs instead of words that could break her heart.

“Hermione –” There was such longing in his voice, she could bear to hear no more.

“Draco, please –” It came out raggedy and raw around the edges, her carefully guarded heart now worn on her sleeve.

He did not listen: “I look at you, and I can see what we could become –”

“Could have been,” Hermione said through her tears, but it was like trying to stop the tide from coming in.

“Don't tell me you don't feel it, because I won't believe you. Hermione, if –” He looked at her properly for the first time since throwing a hand grenade into the carefully constructed bounds of their relationship. “I wasted so many chances. If I only had been a little less stupid, I could have been with you properly. Alive.”

The worst thing was that she could see it, too – the future they could have had. 

Like a castle in the air, it rose before her, built of love and loss and second chances – all the paths they would have walked together. She knew him now, like she had not known him when he was still alive, and she could see how alike they were in many things. They would have withstood everything, taken on the world together with each other at their backs and changed it into something better.

Could have.

“You told me Potter found the Resurrection Stone, but he let it fall somewhere in the forest,” Draco said eagerly. “You could –”

Perhaps it was nine months since the Battle of Hogwarts that had raised the invisible barrier between them – the time of loss and coming to terms with life after the war that she had lived through, but Draco had not.

He was frozen in time, a perfect version of Draco as he had been on the 2nd of May 1998, and however much he might regret how things had turned out, he himself had not changed.

Could not change.

Hermione felt like she had aged a hundred years since she first heard about the Hallows. The truth of the story sat in her bones, and she carried its weight like a cloak wrapped around her shoulders weighing her down to earth.

There were no shortcuts, no ways to trick Death.

“I can't, Draco. It wouldn't work. You know what happened to the second brother.”

He nodded, transparent tears trickling down his face. Hermione stretched out her hand to wipe them away but fumbled at thin air.

“Draco, if I can – if we meet somewhere I will go with you. Sometime, I will meet you. On the other side.” She was crying, too.

Somehow, she knew this was the last time she would see his seventeen-year-old self, the last time he would seek her out at Hogwarts.

She was going where he could not follow, and there was nothing either of them could do about that.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, reaching for his hand and grasping only air.

* * *

Hermione couldn't remember what had happened right at the end. Her memory went fuzzy with pain, until the pain was no more and the cracked ceiling at St Mungo's disappeared. She was sitting up now, for the first time in months, and she jerked forwards as she moved but she wasn't moving –

Oh, she was on a train. How quaint.

Shifting slightly in her seat, she felt a thigh next to hers; all of a sudden, warmth bloomed on her left-hand side and she turned towards her companion.

He was older than when she had seen him last, but she would know those eyes anywhere. There was too much to say and she couldn't remember half of it right then, so they just looked at each other and smiled.

Draco took her hand as they picked up speed, the familiar chu-chunk, chu-chunk of the tracks rocking the train slightly.

It didn't matter how they had got there. All that mattered was that they were facing the next big adventure together.

**THE END**


End file.
